A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to vacuum breakers that are used primarily in connection with indoor plumbing systems. It is especially useful where the vacuum breaker is mounted on a wall and the appearance of the vacuum breaker is very important.
B. Description of the Art
Many devices which require a water supply (e.g. dishwashers, washing machines, swimming pool fillers, whirlpool tubs, garden watering systems and water closets) need some protection upstream of the device so a supply line break will not draw contaminated water back out of the device. This is especially important, for example, in high rise buildings, where if a supply pipe were to break on the first floor, much of the contaminated water from toilet tanks and other fixtures on the upper floors of the building might backflow to the lower floors.
While prior art vacuum breaker assemblies usually do serve to protect against backflows, they have a number of other problems. For example, because these vacuum breakers are so bulky, they often have a very ugly appearance, and they take up unnecessary amounts of wall space. Also, it is possible that one of the many protruding parts of these assemblies can cause injury to an inattentive person if the person were to bump against them.
Any attempt to minimize these problems by locating the vacuum breaker behind a wall during the initial construction of a building will only create a further problem of how necessary access to the vacuum breaker can be maintained without incurring substantial expense. Such access is needed because conventional vacuum breakers can from time to time require replacement of seals or removal of sediment collected in the breaker.
Another problem with prior art vacuum breakers is that they are often difficult and expensive to install. This is because they usually required the plumber to prelocate wall piping at various depths relative to the wall, and at fixed horizontal and vertical relationships to each other. Further, such prior art systems can be susceptible to leakage problems because they require the plumber to make many joints. Therefore, it can be seen that the need has existed for a vacuum breaker which improves upon prior art vacuum breakers in dealing with these problems.